the torn down, the experts at the fall
by Gray Doll
Summary: On her right, there is a safety net, but she thinks there is no point in being a tightrope walker, if you are afraid of the abyss.


**a.n./** hey, look who popped in! happy holidays everyone! well, about this one - admittedly, I find it very, very hard to be inspired by s7 so far, even though I'm genuinely happy that Jane's finally happy. I was thinking, though, about how circus-like things had become with all the Lisbon/Pike/Jane, well, situation, and then I also stumbled upon a certain song, and then I also started missing the Mentalist of seasons 1-5- way too much... and so this happened. The second part takes place before the season 6 finale, of course, and the first part is me wanting the CBI back.

The lyrics at the beginning and end are from "The Man on the Flying Trapeze", by George Leybourne, and yes, it could be Marcus's own commentary. ...in my head at least.

* * *

><p><em>The girl that I loved she was handsome; <em>

_I tried all I knew her to please _

_But I could not please her one quarter so well _

_As the man upon the trapeze. _

_He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease, _

_That daring young man on the flying trapeze. _

_His movements were graceful, all girls he could please _

_And my love he purloined away._

* * *

><p><strong>the torn down, the experts at the fall<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>ACT ONE<strong>

Teresa's life is a circus, and she is a tightrope walker.

(Sometimes, she imagines bright posters glued to dirty brick walls, greens and yellows and reds, _come to the circus, see, marvel_. Sometimes, she imagines a circling stage of fading brown sand, dark stands spreading out around, crowds waiting with bated breath.)

On her right, there's a safety net: on her left, the abyss. Eventually, she's going to fall.

Around her, the audience roars.

**.**

THE TRAPEZE ARTIST

Jane is the dancer in empty air; he swings and arcs and flashes, even when there is no one there to catch him. He gets the most applause and the deepest, most terrified gasps.

He always seems like he knows what he's doing, and that's the science that keeps the whole show together: in truth, he never looks before he leaps.

Teresa is trying to fill a closing report, a pen is heavy and cracking in her hand – but Jane is perched on the edge of her desk and he smells of tea and restlessness. "You're not helping," she says, and she sounds irritated, or maybe she sounds tired, and he brings his cup to his lips, then starts stacking case files like card houses.

"Stop it," she tries again, but it's more of an exhale than anything.

A folder falls to the floor, and he proclaims he's tired, and before she knows it they've moved to his couch, all her papers now folded neatly in her lap. "Signing boring closing reports is always more bearable when you're comfortable," he says, shrugs, and sprawls across the leather clad seats, drops his head on her lap, and stares up at her in unrepentant challenge.

Teresa holds very still. Her fingers go still around the blue point pen, eyes unseeing, and she remembers suddenly a story she'd read as a child, about a girl who tamed a wild stallion no one else could ride. She'd imagined it for weeks after that – the sleek white shadow, its feral grace, ever and always hers.

She isn't nine anymore. "The teddy bear eyes thing is getting old," she says, and Jane closes his eyes, so they can both pretend he isn't there.

It's the minute moment before the leap that has the crowd gasping and holding their breaths. It's the backwards flip into the air that makes them grip their seats. It's the second before the act is done: it's the second where you wonder if he will land on his feet.

Teresa stares at faded pages, feels the rare and trusting weight of the golden head on her thigh. She drops down one hand, brushing her fingertips against his hair.

She can still remember the exact sound of the elevator doors closing between them.

**.**

THE LION TAMER

Cho keeps all his beasts in check.

She sees flashes of something broken and feral inside: at the Bureau's weekend fundraiser, all the cameras are there, Cho stalks beside her and is nowhere to be seen at the same time. He's almost too quiet when he walks, and he never falters, _never_. He has years of violence and wrongness lurking behind him, but when a rookie in a pointed hat claps him on the shoulder, he almost smiles and mouths a greeting.

"He's one of our best agents," her superiors tell her, "You're lucky to have him in your team." She smiles and agrees – although some times, just some times, she almost sees them flinch and knows that her own smile is too sharp. Dancing with lions brings its own price; they are all marked with new scars. They see enemies in every shadow.

Cho accepts a glass of lemonade from a makeshift stand, brings it to her and wears the same face he would if he were interrogating a suspect. She thinks of tigers held behind bars, and of the single man, the single artist that knows how to maneuver them.

When she sends Cho out on the field, she feels the hard, savage strength of his determination. His face is all hard, clean lines and his muscles flex. She never watches his back as he leaves – she always knows she'll see him again.

**.**

THE ELEPHANT (UNCREDITED)

Sometimes, if Teresa tries very hard and the light slants through the windows in just the right way, she can pretend everything is okay and normal. She thinks about getting a haircut. She worries about that water bill she's left two months unpaid.

She thinks she likes the poetry of Grace VanPelt. Or rather, if she wants to be entirely and painfully honest with herself, there's something about the younger woman's smile, about the way red hair falls around her face, about the ever good and innocent sparks in her eyes, that Teresa envies.

Grace cares about saving the trees and how well the light hits their desks. Grace makes everyone coffee and she brings cookies and thinks black chocolate is better for your health. Grace has a lilt in her step and her fingers never grip her gun too tight.

(Teresa corrects herself: Grace used to care, used to make, used to bring, used to think, used to have.)

There are certain things they never talk about in the bullpen nowadays. If Grace's girlish smile disappears, quick and fleet, and her stare goes blank and hard at the same time, if she gets too involved in a case concerning a woman deceived by a man, then Teresa will speak nothing of it. Everyone will pretend not to have noticed.

It's the steady, foolproof science of habit – if they were dogs, they'd be Pavlov's – the days pass and the weeks pass and what used to be pretending does become truth, after all: Teresa, sometimes, genuinely does not notice the shadows crossing Grace's face.

Grace cares about how her hair looks and about healthy diet and matching clothes. Grace beams at every passing friend and looks like the sweet protagonist from that movie everyone liked.

Grace asks about party decorations because it's Rigsby's birthday and she's planning a big surprise - "Can you help, Boss? Saturday, I mean? Please?" and her face looks guileless and alive, and their team has three open murder cases on their desks.

Sometimes when Grace laughs, Teresa sees a flash of hard metal in her eyes.

**.**

THE CLOWN CAR

There are so many acts in the show – Rigsby, she thinks, is both the man who baits the bear and convinces the crowd to start clapping. There are so many martyrs, and such a small space.

Once, when he was still a rookie and she an agent, Rigsby had comically and good-naturedly argued with Lisbon about who got to eat the last doughnut. They both had laughed, and in the end no one had gotten it, because it'd fallen to the floor and one of them – she doesn't really remember who – had stepped on it.

Now they're older, and they've seen too many things, and Rigsby's gaze looks old and weighted with ghosts. There's almost always a smile hung on his face, carefully stitched into the skin, lifting the corners of his mouth and bringing forth all kinds of good and bad jokes. She had once told him that he has a heart big enough for the whole world.

Rigsby, she thinks, is a good father. Rigsby, she thinks, is a good cop. Rigsby, she thinks, is losing himself in that crafted kind of light. Rigsby, she knows, is a good man. Teresa had been willing to let Rigsby eat the last doughnut, but she isn't willing to let Rigsby die.

She isn't terrified of blood and fire and ashen corpses, but she's terrified of martyrdom. She's terrified of empty spaces. When she hears gunfire, he's the first she looks around for. He's the first she thinks has been hurt, because it will always seem to her like that's what he was stitched up for.

**.**

THE RINGMASTER

The ringmaster is just as invisible as the elephant, but when you think about it, at the end of the day it's what makes him so vital to the show – and still, Red John is everywhere. His name haunts the edges of their conversations; he suffuses over all their plans. Teresa is human and alive and warm, but there are times when she tastes his presence like blood, clotting between her teeth, closing up her throat.

The ringmaster is often mistaken for the knife thrower.

The show must go on.

Red John makes Jane's hands clench, makes his eyes darken; if he had claws, Teresa knows, they would rake the wall. Other times Red John makes Jane grin, bright teeth too white and too quick.

Red John makes Cho blink faster than usual. Red John makes Rigsby's face turn colorless, a sudden stranger; VanPelt tilts her head, warm bright glow gone far too sharply.

When Teresa reaches the end of her tightrope – if she reaches the end – blood on the walls will surely be there.

She has no idea what they all will do then.

**.**

THE STANDS

It's not a sold-out show. There are empty seats. They get emptier every day.

Tommy would like to do more than watch from the bleachers, but Tommy is still the Lisbon kid brother, and they will not let him play.

But when they are still children, there are certain things only Tommy understands. Like when a random woman passes on the street, wearing the same shirt their mother used to wear, and Teresa blinks back sudden tears while her little brother's fingertips skim her wrist.

Or when they're adults, and her mother's once favorite song comes on the radio, and Jane hums quietly in the passenger's seat but Teresa wishes she could reach for her phone and text her brother something meaningless, just so that he would respond.

On her parent's anniversary, so many years after their deaths, a molten weight sits on Teresa's chest; she locks the doors and turns off her ringer and curls into the edge of the couch with her arms around a pillow. A part of her wishes Tommy were here, making her popcorn like she used to do for him when they were kids.

She puts some old cartoon movie and sits there staring at the screen until the sun is high in the sky.

**.**

THE FUNHOUSE MIRROR

The day she listens in on Jane's questioning of Lorelei, Teresa almost freezes. She is not accustomed to the white hot flash of rage; for a moment, she cannot see.

Later, when she tries to talk to her alone, away from Jane and all his justified broken interest for her, Lorelei purses her lips and tilts her head to the side but her eyes, her eyes are dark broken things. They look like mirrors. She is sitting on the other side of the interrogation table, poised in orange cotton, and Lisbon fleetingly thinks she sees herself, and then herself reflected; so many slivered images, so many barbed-wire smiles.

"I really _do_ think he's a little in love with you," Lorelei says slowly, and before Teresa can even find words, "But I don't think he'd risk his big revenge for you."

Maybe, Teresa thinks, maybe Lorelei is just as uneasy. It's not a simple thing to be yourself with someone else's thoughts. It's not a simple thing to abandon everything just to follow a single man down a road that you know will only lead you to blood and death.

She imagines herself bitter and dressed in red – all hard edges and easy, secret laughter, a mangled thing that's not her own inside her chest to call a heart.

Her hands are shaking when she stands to leave the interrogation room.

**.**

THE DOG SHOW

Bosco groaned and grimaced in hospital sheets, losing himself to time, losing himself to the creeping bullet wound and the overwhelming sense of betrayal and helplessness that blistered through and left his flesh white and decaying. Bosco's eyes were old and shattered and tired.

Kristina was clad in deathly white and her skin was ashen paper, head buried in a dreamlike cloud they hadn't been able to get her out of. Kristina's eyes were old and glassy and dead.

The dog act, Teresa thinks, is canceled until further notice.

)O(

COME TO THE CIRCUS!

_SEE_:

The Little Rabbit

The Ice Man

The Righteous Knight

_MARVEL! AT_:

The Knife Thrower

The Lady in Red

The Black Lamb

_STARRING:_

The Amazing Mentalist

The Princess That Was Not A Princess

She envisions tattered posters, fading colorful images lining brick walls, other names crossed off. She imagines, thinks, _final show_.

)O(

**ACT TWO**

Teresa's life is still a circus, and she is still a tightrope walker. On her right, a safety net; on her left, the abyss.

(Sometimes, she imagines bright posters glued to dirty brick walls, greens and yellows and reds, _come to the circus, see, marvel_. Sometimes, she imagines a circling stage of fading brown sand, dark stands spreading out around, crowds waiting with bated breath.)

Around her, the audience still roars.

**.**

TIGHTROPE

Marcus brings her hot coffee when she's tired. She's staring at old photos (graduation from the Academy: an eternity ago) and he sits down next to her, not close enough to touch, but she feels the air shift around them. It's familiar, now, the way it will soon start feeling like comfort and fatigue and secondhand secrets.

"Okay?" he asks. It's a simple question. Not a simple answer, but she hears the tired warmth in his voice.

She smiles, a little. "Okay," she says, muffled, and- "Don't move."

She leans into him, head resting on his shoulder (she thinks it's the first time she's ever done this, but the lights are too dim and her head feels too numb for her to be sure). She feels him relax underneath her, and the cup of coffee is still warm in her hands.

"It's been a rough day," he says, quiet, soothing, and places a reassuring kiss against her hairline. "But everything's always better in the morning."

"Mmmh." She thinks she might fall asleep against him, but she stops herself before it gets that far.

"Teresa," he murmurs, and she draws back, tilting her head up as she smiles.

**.**

Jane brings her grief and a smile that feels like black nettles if she can see the pain underneath, but it has been a long time since Teresa has been startled to find him waiting outside her door. It doesn't make her less exasperated.

"Checking in," he says, and sounds maybe too scratchy.

"Everything's fine." Her reply could have sounded too curt. She genuinely hopes it didn't. They both hold still for several long seconds, before she bristles like a cat. "Jane-"

He is watching her. In the frozen instant before he looks away, she sees only the little boy lost.

She thinks that maybe she sounds too harsh – they had both almost died that day.

"Jane," she says again, and she doesn't know if it's a question or a sigh – but it doesn't matter anyway. A leaf whispers in the empty, shadowed space he leaves behind.

His head is full of death, she knows. Some if it is hers. All their ragged edges are unraveling.

**.**

THE PLUNGE

Teresa's life is still a circus, and she is a tightrope walker. On her right, a safety net; on her left, the abyss.

In the dream, there is darkness all around her, but the glaring spotlight in hot on her skin. She is wearing something spangly and revealing. Exposed, she teeters, and the crowd jeers. She is infinitely high up, but popcorn still lands in her hair.

She holds her arms out to the sides, for balance; she adjusts the little parasol in her hand. Squinting at the spotlight, she takes half a cautious step, but her legs shake and the rope beneath her feet is taught and slick with blood.

She thinks she hears someone calling her name.

The lurch is inevitable; the air rushes around her as she teeters, tumbles-

-wakes with a jerk, and stares into the blackness.

Beside her, Marcus shifts, his arm snakes around her waist. He draws her closer, face close to her hair, and she worms in, hands close to his shoulders. She can feel her heart beat, too fast, drumming inside her chest – pulse enough for the two (three) of them.

In the dark, she shuts her eyes, and tells herself she's hit the net.

When she sees Jane again, only a couple of hours later, she thinks that she has made the right choice, and has avoided the dizzying fall.

(She was never meant for the safety net though, and it's the one things that keeps her awake at night, every night. She thinks there is no point in being a tightrope walker, if you are afraid of the plunge.

Trapeze artists, after all, are the experts at the fall.)

* * *

><p><em>Without any trousseau she'd fled in the night <em>

_With him with the greatest of ease, _

_From two stories high he'd lowered her down _

_To the ground on his flying trapeze. _

_Some months after that I went into a hall, _

_And to my surprise,I found there on the wall, _

_A bill in red letters which did my heart gall, _

_That she was appearing with him._


End file.
